By using a theomusicalogical approach, Yahya Jongintaba (formerly Jon Michael Spencer) is able to push aside accepted attitudes and present a unique study of the blues and the culture that created it. He reveals religious substance in this music’s content and language that has been gradually obscured as the blues evolved from a simple rural music following Reconstruction to its present urban form. The evidence strongly implies a fundamental religious concern for the same life issues expressed in orthodox religious music.
Spencer suggests that white blues scholars have tended to overlook the religious nature of the blues partly because they have not fully understood African-American culture. They have tended to give validity to the old southern folkloric belief that blues music was “devil’s music,” disregarding the ethos of the blues as it exists on the periphery of doctrinal Christianity where religious pondering, as well as opposition to white oppression, could be expressed behind a protective veil of music.
By using a theomusicalogical approach, Yahya Jongintaba (formerly Jon Michael Spencer) is able to push aside accepted attitudes and present a unique study of the blues and the culture that created it. He reveals religious substance in this music’s content and language that has been gradually obscured as the blues evolved from a simple rural music following Reconstruction to its present urban form. The evidence strongly implies a fundamental religious concern for the same life issues expressed in orthodox religious music.
Spencer suggests that white blues scholars have tended to overlook the religious nature of the blues partly because they have not fully understood African-American culture. They have tended to give validity to the old southern folkloric belief that blues music was “devil’s music,” disregarding the ethos of the blues as it exists on the periphery of doctrinal Christianity where religious pondering, as well as opposition to white oppression, could be expressed behind a protective veil of music.
Blues and Evil
208
Blues and Evil
208Paperback(First Edition, First Edition)
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780870497834 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Tennessee Press |
| Publication date: | 04/30/1993 |
| Edition description: | First Edition, First Edition |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d) |